Ultrabooks may not be selling as well as expected; 7.7 percent drop in outlook warns of trouble ahead

Intel Corp. (INTC) on Friday announced a trimming back its Q3 2012 earnings predicition from an already gloomy $14.3B +/- 0.5B USD to $13.2B +/- 0.3B USD. The 7.7 percent dip was blamed on a variety of factors.

David Schmook, head of North American operations at Lenovo, said in a previous interview, "[Intel meeting its 2012 ultrabook targets is] going to require a very strong first couple of weeks of launch of Win 8. They’ll be a lot bigger than they are now. I don’t know if it will get all the way up to 40 percent."

The good news for Intel is that ARM chipmakers who rely on third party fabs like Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Comp., Ltd. (TPE:2330) (TSMC) have barely squeaked onto the 28 nm node. Meanwhile, Intel is already mass-producing at 22 nm and will move to 14 nm node in 2014. Samsung has plans for 14 nm, but it appears Intel is at least a bit ahead at the moment.

Intel did offer another scrap of good news -- it thinks it can repurpose existing machinery/resources at its fabs for the 14 nm die shrink, which it says will allow it to cut capital spending from $12.9B USD to $12.1B USD. That should help it post a bit better net earnings numbers come Q3's official figures.